It is easy to fall into the trap of a Wikipedia-style analysis when thinking about any major war: fixating on the facts, figures, and proximal causes. What this neglects, however, is a true understanding of each war as a complex interaction between politics, ordinary individuals, and culture—a flaw that the Afterlives of the Korean War Symposium helped reveal.
Over 60 years after the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, this two-day symposium probed the consequences of a divided nation in limbo between war and peace. The first event, a panel discussion on “Unfinished Wars and the Politics of the Past,” featured four distinguished professors deconstructing the Korean War from four very different angles.
In hearing Dr. John Price speak about Canadian war crimes in Korea, I was immediately struck by the extent to which notions of justice and honor can so easily be distorted in times of war. Dr. Price explained that soldiers who were tried and sentenced for war crimes by a Canadian army court martial while in Korea often returned to Canada only to have this ruling overturned by the Canadian Defence Department. Because it radically undermined notions of committing to honor and peace that tend to colour perceptions of the Canadian Armed Forces, this talk was perhaps the most uncomfortable to absorb.
Three more panel presentations followed, each of them continuing the trend of charting new territory in the discussion of the Korean War. Drs. Monica Kim, Christine Hong, and Hosu Kim each gave compelling talks that focused on the psychological consequences of war, touching on topics of repatriation, racial and queer identities in the army, and transnational adoption processes, respectively.
While all three raised important questions about the Korean War, I thought the most interesting was Dr. Hosu Kim’s commentary on the transnational adoption process as a means for Korean women to contribute to national defence and nation-building in the context of war. Dr. Kim ended the talk with a tearful description of the shame and sacrifice felt by the birthmothers who gave up their children in this initiative, reminding the audience of the profound psychological and emotional consequences of war.
Later that evening, in a blend of traditional Korean and contemporary Western styles of music and dance, Dohee Lee and SKIM collaborated in their performance of “Ara Gut of Jeju.” Having had a chance to talk to the performers earlier, I learned that they wanted to emphasize the notion of continuity between ancestral lives and afterlives. It was captivating to see this emerge tangibly in their performance, progressing from an interpretation of the Korean Creator Goddess to a surprisingly harmonious blend of rap, Korean drumming, and acoustic guitar riffs.
Ara Gut of Jeju performance. Photos by Nicolett Jakab.
Dr. Dong-Choon Kim began the second day of the symposium with a fascinating lecture on the prospects for truth and reconciliation amidst the continuation of the Korean War. This lecture haunted me with the idea that justice is essentially unattainable in a case where both sides are
perpetrators and where the conflict has been drawn out so long that a collective amnesia sets in among the population. With documents disappearing, victims’ anger subsiding, and the perpetrators virtually unidentifiable, the only recourse left is a pursuit of truth and reconciliation measures in place of justice.
Dr. Dong-Choon Kim. Photo by Paul Whittam
The symposium closed with the screening of Jiseul, a black-and-white dramatic film depicting the lives of Jeju Island natives hiding to escape the U.S. Military’s execution orders. Prior to the film, it was noted that the title Jiseul means “potato” in the Korean dialect spoken on the Island—a title that speaks to the importance and celebration of the most basic survival tools in the midst of desperation. By far the most salient aspect of the film was the use of humor contrasted against bleak circumstances at the beginning, which gradually disappeared as the film progressed, leaving only the melancholy of war at the end. This thought continues to linger with me because of how well the film captured the breakdown of human resiliency and social ties under the weight of war and conflict.
Overall, the symposium was a good reminder that an understanding of any event must be holistic and integrative to be of any value. All four events were highly complementary and they each succeeded in resurrecting the “forgotten war” from the primitive descriptions that feature in history textbooks—a trend that will hopefully continue to characterize explorations of the conflict.
-written by Fatin Tawfig, a third year student double majoring in psychology and political science at the University of Toronto.
This article is part of a series of articles written by undergraduate students affiliated with the Asian Institute about events hosted by the Asian Institute.